He made his decision at once, trusting Nahud’r knew what he was about. To him, it felt almost too much like the foul sorceries used by Grimnir’s Ymirish. But if the Shemite was certain . . .
“Reave! The supplies. Burn them!”
His friend did not even question the change of plans, but turned at once to the nearest lean-to shed and thrust his torches in among the branches, even finding a small heap of canvas to work into a blaze. Kern, meanwhile, had kindled some flames down low on the overhang. Nahud’r added a pinch of the shaman’s powder, and the flames danced up stronger at once. But not enough.
Canvas!
“Tents! Grab the felt!”
He raced to the nearest fired tent. Using the long-handled brands, he dug them beneath the burning material and dragged them over into the lean-to. A sidelong thrust hurled the fire into the very middle, setting it over food wrapped in oilskin cloths and leather, belts and boots and plenty of furs. Weapons with wooden handles.
It could all burn.
Nahud’r dug out a larger pinch of the shaman’s fire powder, still being careful of what it might do, and threw it into the burning mess. The flames jumped up at once, bright and painful, and hot enough to quickly set the shelter’s roof afire as well. That was going to get some attention. Faster, even, than he thought.
“Kern! They’re coming!”
A glance downhill confirmed that. There were several Vanir racing back the way they’d come, yelling about the attack on their camp. The closest were archers, unfortunately. Which meant they were out of time.
As Nahud’r sprinted over to Reave, to throw some powder into that fire, Kern stepped in front of the lean-to shelter, his flaming brands raised high overhead. Backlit by the building fire, the torches snapping at the air, he was a clear challenge. The first arrow thwacked into the shelter’s burning support pole. A second dug into the earth right at Kern’s feet.
“Close enough,” he yelled, hurling his torches each into two unfired tents as he chased Reave and Nahud’r out of the campsite.
“Yea and you could not think to use the tents to kindle the big blaze earlier?” Reave shouted back.
“I’m nay Conan,” Kern yelled back. Then again, who was?
The three men stumble-ran down the hillside, taking a hard angle away from the oncoming Vanir. Most of the enemy were falling back now, but to their camp to save and defend what little they had left to worry over rather than after the three fleeing men. A few raiders down near the bottom of the hill, running back from their abandoned attempt to trap the fleeing archers, cut along at the bottom in an attempt to cut them off.
Two, Kern counted. And he watched them run right past the location where he and Reave and Nahud’r had hidden earlier.
Where Aodh and Ashul rose like vengeful spirits of the Cimmerians who once fought and died at Venarium. Their swords slashed out low and evil, hamstringing both men before they even knew they were attacked. Aodh made short work of his, running him through the heart to pin him to the ground. Ashul leaped onto hers, blade rising and falling, rising and falling.
And then there was no one left to challenge them. Nahud’r was all but lost in the darkness. Reave fell slightly behind Kern as they raced off the hill and into some light tree cover, but kept up. And if everyone else had come through all right, Aodh and Ashul would melt back to drag out the four archers hiding in their camouflage holes, and the others could abandon their places on the fallback position, having never been needed.
Not too many kills this night. But enough. Enough to trade against no one hurt or dead among Kern’s warriors. He hoped. And behind them, they had left chaos and a certain new chapter in the legends surrounding Venarium. New echoes, to chase through the years, of battle and death. A feeling that should have left Kern feeling satisfied.
Except that it remained to be found—what kind of echoes Grimnir had left for him inside Conall Valley.
10
THE HARDPAN FLATS left Kern feeling exposed, like an insect caught on a flat cake griddle as he stared across several leagues of open, vulnerable ground. His fast-moving pack had slipped east from Venarium, beneath the massive peak of Ben Morgh and the southern foothills, which eventually pushed up (not far to the north) as the valley’s western Teeth.
Mesa country, this. The lowlands rose in large steppes from nearby Gunderland up toward Crom’s dais, the Cimmerian high country. Hardscrabble paths cut around summer-baked mudflats gone soft with the winter melt. Flood-swept plateaus with standing pools of muddy, wind-stirred waters, lay scourged under hard, biting winds which blasted down off the valley’s western teeth.
Kern and his warriors scrambled up the steep sides of a low ridge to find another wide, flat plateau where anyone—clan or Vanir or southlander (Gundermen, likely)—could see them from the far side. See them. Dig in behind a shelf of loose rock or move in behind one of the low-rise battle mounds to wait them out. Prepare to attack.